17/06/2025
https://sanhati.com/articles/20327/
Opinion: Savarkar’s Vision and the Hinduisation of Politics
This opinion piece was written in April 2025 by an activist in West Bengal.
Savarkar wanted to Hinduise politics and militarise Hindu society. But Hinduising politics doesn’t just mean doing Hindutva-based politics within the political sphere. It means transforming the very domain of politics into a Hinduized space. That is why the RSS is pleased when other political parties, even outside its own political wing (the Bharatiya Janata Party) begin to speak in the language of Hindutva. Rising above petty electoral calculations, they are working toward this long-term goal. Even if another party gains a few electoral advantages, it still ends up paving the way, rather than obstructing, to the formation of a Hindu Rashtra.
In fact, whenever they’ve succeeded in making forces outside of their political wing adopt their ideology, their power has grown. RSS chief Sudarshan once said that all political forces, as long as they believe in Hindu awakening, swadeshi (economic nationalism), and cultural nationalism, are equal in their eyes.
A month before the 1984 election, the RSS’s prominent ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh urged people to vote for Rajiv Gandhi. And it is no secret that the RSS mobilized its cadre in full force to bring Rajiv Gandhi to power in that election. After that historic victory, Jagjivan Ram even remarked that the outcome was a “vote for Hindu India.” There is a long history of how Indira Gandhi, since 1966, gradually diluted the secular legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru. And what benefit did the Congress gain from all that? We all know the answer.
The opening of the locks at Ram Janmabhoomi and the appeasement of Muslim fundamentalists in the Shah Bano case were twin blunders that began Congress’s decline. They could never recover from it. Thus, embedded within the historic victory of 1984 was the beginning of Congress’s long descent.
Take the recent example of Arvind Kejriwal. Even though playing the Hindu card helped him in one or two elections, in the end, even Lord Hanuman couldn’t save him.
Now consider the crores of public funds being spent in West Bengal to build places of worship for the majority religion. These will have long-term consequences. Perhaps it will help pave the way for Mamata Banerjee’s victory in the 2026 elections. But has she thought about how the Muslim community, who have kept the BJP out of Bengal and helped her win almost every election, must feel? How must it feel to witness the celebration of the majority religion with state money?
Why is it that people of other religions are barred from entering the sanctum of these temples? What logic allows Brahmins from other states to come and impose their Brahminical rituals? Mamata Banerjee, as an individual, has every right to believe in Hinduism. She can build temples with her personal funds or via a private trust. That falls within her right to practice religion. But taking an oath on India’s secular Constitution and then using public funds to construct temples for the majority religion does not promote communal harmony.
Dilip Ghosh, far closer to the Sangh than Suvendu Adhikary, is aware of this and rightly sees it as part of the broader Hindu awakening.
Will this directly help the BJP in the short term? Probably not. Unless something unexpected happens, this rudderless party is likely to falter in the 2026 election. But in the long term, the Sangh Parivar will benefit by pushing everyone in the ruling party to observe Ram Navami, perform Ganga Aarti, and similar acts, slowly Hinduizing Bengali society. And the BJP will eventually reap the rewards.
Mamata Banerjee had the opportunity to walk the open path of Bengal’s liberal and non-communal cultural tradition. Through that, she could have laid out a distinctive model of federal politics before her party’s supporters. She saw some success along that path in the 2021 election. But this is exactly where the RSS has succeeded: by transforming politics itself through its work, it has managed to Hinduize the entire political sphere. And it has influenced even parties outside the BJP with its ideology.
This is precisely the time to uplift and reclaim Bengal’s secular traditions, and, beyond personal religiosity or atheism, to actively embrace the currently vilified path of secularism in public life.
